Christopher Cadra

Poetry

 

 

The Living Dead

 

The clock said it was half-past one.

When she heard it, she took it as a joke,

But when she realized there was no joke,

She grew quite feisty, started lashing out.

It was less like a film and more like gauze,

Though her eyes, those eyes, were filmy, had been.

(Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve.)

She needed it, needed it, needed it,

Like a nymphomaniac, or maybe

Just a maniac, or maybe…

 

When the clock struck two, he was blubbering,

For good reason, too. All that he wanted

Was for the voices to stop. “Please, stop. Please.”

We wept, he prayed, he wept and prayed.

Nothing helped. He’d been here too many times.

The voices tonight were especially vicious.

He knew of only one way to stop them.

But he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t, he…

 

The clock said three when they arrived home.

They planned on staying out until midnight,

But the party was too much fun.

Him and her, they had too much fun.

On the way home, though, they’d noticed

A mist enveloping the car.

It was perhaps drizzling a bit,

But so slightly it was hard to notice.

He didn’t think twice about it,

But she had felt something in her,

Like a foreboding of some sort,

A melancholy, which wasn’t hers, yet…

 

 

 

The Hookah-Lounge

 

A cruel green neon sign: HOOKAH-LOUNGE

He was not sure whether it was Friday or Saturday.

And he had missed a girl. His eyes misty,

He wasn’t sure, he wasn’t sure,

He could hardly think, it hurt him to think,

Stale tobacco smoke inducing a trance.

Waves waving, patterns waving, moody sea,

A moody sea of flowers in his head.

He could hear the muffled sound of dotards reminiscing,

He could hear the piercing sound of young ones pealing.

‘I prefer the dotards,’ he thinks. ‘Despite my youth,

I am one myself.’ He wondered…

He wondered whether it was her he was after

And not something else, something like

The idea of her, or perhaps better:

Not the idea of her but the idea…

It was not her he was in love with,

He realized. It was Love itself.

 

 

 

Old Time Religious Carnival Music

 

COME ONE, COME ALL!

The tramps and the dwarfs saddle around the bearded woman.

The bearded woman could be the fat woman as well, if only—

All of these men in the back of the tent,

With dwindling hopes of immortality,

Can gather only the courage needed for immorality,

Yet it suffices. Immorality will always suffice.

COTTON CANDY AND CANDY APPLES: $5!

And the folk who had come could not place the faces on the right one face.

And so everyone’s walking around with the wrong face on.

And the carousel was haranguing the children with its music,

And the carousel was spinning as fast as could be,

And it was calling out to those who would listen,

And it was calling out to those who would not.

And the children on it were struck in a daze,

And the others walked round it in a ring.

TRY YOUR LUCK AND WIN A PRIZE: $5!

There was a man, just outside the ring, and he had,

And held out for sale, a big bag full of stars.

Dwarf stars mostly, but others too, like flare stars,

And he was selling them for cheap,

“cheap! cheap! cheap!” tweeting like a bird.

He was showing off the stars, like

Bowling balls of desire, crystal balls of fire:

Red fire, blue fire, green fire! All kinds of fire!

“Ah ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! Ah! Ha!”

He laughed at a child who had grown blind

At the brightness of a flare star brightening,

And this made the trip, for the child,

Worth a whole year of maturity, even if the maturity

Would wear off by the time he finished his

Unbelievably blue, unbelievably sticky cotton candy.

 

 

 

Some Dive Bar, Downtown

 

She was like chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss,

Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,

And man, the men flocked to her like flies to a light.

“Those tits!” they’d say. “That ass!” they’d say,

But they all knew it was something else,

Something more, something hidden…

“Ya know, I’ve read that fairies are angels,

Not quite good enough for heaven,

But not quite bad enough for hell either.”

“Oh yeah? You read that in a book?” he said, chuckling.

“Yes, actually, I did. I read it in a book,” he replied.

The bathroom stall asked, “What are you doing?”

And the sick man had no reply, no reply, none.

EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS!

The mirror had written on it obscenities.

She had scratched until it bled: her forearm,

It had bled, it had bled, but she covered it up,

She had covered it up with gauze,

Like a mummy, she was a mummy.

She covered her forearm, but she kept on

Scratching anyway [Scratch-scratch-scratch],

Like the match against the matchbook [Scratch-scratch],

And finally, it lit, the match lit up.

The sound of the pipe being hit is not

Phonetic. There is no faithful phonetic rendering

Of the pipe being hit. A whoosh!

Close, maybe, but not realistic. Unreal.

         

 

 

For Him, For Her

 

For her, it was the same.

For her, it was always the same.

For him, it was different, she was different.

But because to her it was always the same,

It didn’t matter that he had feelings

Beyond a service rendered,

A service paid.

 

 

 

Christopher Cadra is an editor at The Literati Quarterly (thelitq.com). His work will be featured in the upcoming summer issue of The Cimarron Review. Bienvenue au Danse, Christopher.